Atlas 0. Ariadne 1.
[No. 79]
WHAT DO YOU THINK ABOUT WHEN YOU ARE LOOKING STRAIGHT AT SOMEONE WHO HAS MISTREATED YOU?
A guest post by multidisciplinary craft artist CARO
There is this passage, “Until Forever,” in Checkout 19 by Claire-Louise Bennett. The tale relayed is of a girl who darns her sister’s dresses by the light of a candle. And the girl does this for so long that her hands lose their substance, become nothing sturdier than gossamer strands, and her needle slips from between her fingers. She can no longer grasp anything. So she throws up her arms. Her fingers which are now thread whip about her, amassing a kinetic energy, and they touch the flame of the candle. The fire races through her, and she jumps into the pile of clothes she has so diligently mended. Together, they burn and turn to ash.
It is my natural state to feel the needle as an extension of my hand, to use its steel shaft and pass through fabric like a wave until my eyes cloud. And I shall do this to be kept alive. Conversely, when my hands are spent, so too will I die.
Photo of Artist CARO by Alex Hainer
Our myths teem with the coupling of thread and life. The Greeks had the sisters Clotho, Lachesis, and Atropos. They were known as Moirai, the apportioners who determined our lifespan. Clotho would spin the golden thread; Lachesis would measure it; and Atropos, with her shears, would cut. In Norse Mythology the three women are Norns; their names meaning fate, becoming, and debt/guilt/that which must happen. We recognize them in English as The Fates from our translation of the Roman parable.
Another legend tells us of the Cretian princess Ariadne, who – unable to be cowed by her family and in passionate defiance – delivers her lover Theseus from the Minotaur and the depths of her father’s maze. She saves him with the gift of a ball of thread, so that he might find his way.
The contemporary field of Logic untethers Ariadne from her fervor and uses her to solve problems. It is concerned with proof. The key to the application of Ariadne’s Thread is the keeping of a record. The record is known as the thread. The algorithm works by following every choice to its natural conclusion. When a contradiction arises, the logician is forced to retreat to the previous forked path.
Quantum theory, however, is not fussed about logic. “Every quantum experiment conducted has shown, again and again, with dismaying mischief, that particles can hold positions contradictory and simultaneous,” Jeanette Winterson writes in Gut Symmetries. “At the sub-atomic level, our seeming-solid material world dissolves into wave-like patterns of probabilities, and these patterns do not represent probabilities of things but probabilities of connection.”
It is not the solid form of man, his logic, nor his parsing that propels us. It is not Atlas and his enduring shoulders that hold up the heavens. It is not the density, no more is it the semblance of his strength. It is Ariadne and her spinning web. It has always been a woman’s hands, and the thread she twines. It has always been her gesture and her touch. It is her reach that reigns, and hers that we await.
“Atlas 0. Ariadne 1.”